Gabriel West Still the One

by Fiona Brand

  Richard placed his laptop on his desk and flicked a lamp so that golden light pooled through his office. He plugged his laptop into the network computer that also took up space on his desk, and booted both systems. He grabbed an extra chair from a neighboring office, and motioned both Tyler and West to sit down, then dumped a pile of CDs on the desk.

  "I've developed a search engine that's adapted to searching files, documents, e-mails—anything that can be stored on computer. All I need to do is key in certain words and it'll queue the documents in priority of the most hits."

  He placed a zip file on the table next to the laptop. "I've had the program running twenty-four/seven for the past week, so that every document that fits the parameters and that's online for even a nanosecond gets copied." He grinned, looking faintly sheepish. "Including all e-mail."

  He sat down and began keying through menus. "That's why I've been working late. I've been spending hours every night sorting through garbage."

  He punched in a command, and within seconds a list of several hundred documents accrued. "Those are today's hits."

  West eyed him sharply. "How did you learn to do this?"

  Richard clicked on the first document and began skimming it. "I play with this stuff in my spare time. It's a hobby."

  West watched him scroll through the pages. "I've done a little programming, but I prefer designing hardware."

  "So I heard."

  Richard met West's gaze and West's stomach relaxed. Whoever the thief was, Richard wasn't involved. They might have their differences, but they were all to do with experiences, not bedrock qualities like honesty and integrity.

  Richard picked up a CD and fed it into the computer. "Ninety-nine percent of the stuff I've been catching has nothing to do with the jade that was stolen. I've stored everything that is directly connected with the jade on this disk. Every piece of documentation, every bit of correspondence and all of the security records from the initial transaction when we secured the pieces is on file."

  He hit a button, and the original purchase document for the jade came up on the screen.

  Tyler ran her eye loosely down the screen, scanning the information. The name on the purchase order and receipt was Kyle Montgomery. Something clicked into place in her mind. Kyle had stepped in and done her job as a stopgap measure after the previous manager had left, and while she finished her doctorate. He had bought a house lot of estate jewelry and auction goods, which had included the jade, but he hadn't understood the significance of the find. Months later, when Tyler had taken over, she had examined the jade and brought in an expert who had identified the pieces as very fine quality Sinkiang nephrite, and the entire world of ancient artifacts had gone wild.

  Reuters and CNN had picked up the story, and it hadn't taken long for the sheer mystery and the human-interest angle of finding the personal effects of a warrior monk, predating the Shaolin, in amongst Maori grave goods, to overtake the exquisite rarity of the find. The artifacts, and Tyler, had become front-page news. The fact that Kyle had made the original purchase and had failed to understand just what it was that he'd bought had never been mentioned, and Tyler, aware that artifacts were not Kyle's area of expertise, had deliberately kept that information under wraps.

  When Richard moved to scroll the screen, she stopped him. "Have the police interviewed Kyle?"

  Richard looked thoughtful. "They've interviewed everyone who had access to the vault, which includes Kyle."

  She moved the cursor on the document until it came to rest on the name of the purchasing officer. "Kyle made the original purchase of the jade, but he didn't know what he'd bought."

  Richard clicked on the print button. The machine hummed to life and a copy of the document slowly fed out. "Lately, Kyle also likes gambling. That's what I was doing at the casino tonight, keeping an eye on him."

  He passed the copy to West.

  West's expression was cold. The link was sketchy, but right now even sketchy would do. Aspects of the theft had been accomplished by someone who knew Laine's security system intimately. Kyle Montgomery had had the access, and he had known how the security worked.

  The only thing missing had been motivation. If Montgomery had a gambling habit, that was a powerful motivation to obtain a lot of money, fast. It all still didn't add up for West—something was missing—but they had enough to get Kyle taken in for questioning again.

  Richard's fingers tapped restlessly on the desk. He picked up a pen and scrawled the receipt number on his blotter. "That number. It rings a bell. Hang on."

  He began sorting through the discs, sending them scattering before finally selecting one. He removed the previous CD and slipped the new one into the slot, then began searching.

  Abruptly he stopped. "This is it. I don't know what it is, but it's something. It uses the first four digits of the receipt."

  West read the brief e-mail which consisted of nothing but numbers and letters. He leaned closer, every instinct on full alert. "That's a map reference.

  And that," he said, pointing at a set of letters and a number, "is a motel."

  He glanced at the original receipt of the jade. "Bingo," he said softly.

  Someone who preferred to remain anonymous, was using the original receipt number for the jade as a reference.

  Chapter 14

  The jade bird nestled in the palm of his hand, the largest of the primitive artifacts surprisingly heavy for its compact size.

  He lifted a glass to his lips, inhaled the smoky perfume of forty-year-old whiskey, savoured a mouthful, and let the potent liquid slide down his throat. The liquor burned in his belly, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and now it was late afternoon.

  He set the tumbler down on his coffee table, beside the other two pieces of jade and contemplated smashing them all.

  All in all, he didn't know what the fuss was all about. The nephrite was a pretty shade of green, but the material was heavy, opaque and oily; he much preferred the translucence of jadeite.

  His mouth curved grimly. Come to that, what he really preferred were diamonds.

  Resisting the desire to toss back the rest of the whiskey, he flipped his briefcase open, wrapped the jade in thick pieces of velvet and wedged them in beside her laptop.

  He grinned, remembering what it had felt like to take the briefcase off the bitch. On impulse, he took the laptop out, flipped the lid and booted it up.

  She was back with her husband.

  A tendril of anger slid past his control. That was a contingency he hadn't planned for. He'd watched her to make sure she was isolated and alone, and he'd made sure she was hurt and frightened. Gabriel West intervening hadn't been a part of the equation.

  In retrospect, he'd made a mistake in hitting her in the garage, but he'd been so incensed that she'd fought back at all that he'd struck out.

  Hot blood coursed through his veins at the memory, throbbed in his groin. He picked up the tumbler and allowed himself another sip, nursed along another pulse of excitement.

  He had nearly had her the other night.

  He should have had her. The cycle should have been complete.

  His fist closed on the glass, and it broke, so that the remains of the whiskey leaked through his fingers along with a thin trail of blood.

  Distantly, he watched the pinkish liquid soak into the carpet, and analyzed the physical effect of the small stinging cut.

  Pain was an interesting tool. It could heighten pleasure, and it could take it away.

  The broken pieces of glass dropped to the floor with a faint tinkle, and with abrupt, precise movements, he shut the computer down, closed the lid and placed the laptop back in the briefcase.

  Broodingly, he went over everything he'd learned about Gabriel West. His knowledge was frustratingly little for the amount of effort he'd expended.

  The man was garbage—scum—but he was physically dangerous. He knew that, as much as he'd trained and honed his own martial arts skills, he couldn't compete one-o
n-one with West.

  Excitement shot a cold thrill up his spine. He'd probed and prodded into the military world, but the SAS were a close-mouthed bunch, and he'd had to be discreet. He had managed to get a few snippets of gossip from an army private, but the details had been blurry. West came and went, he'd spent a lot of time overseas, and he was regarded as some kind of god when it came to weapons.

  He also had powerful friends. The Lombard family, of all people.

  He strolled to the liquor cabinet, tipped another measure into a fresh glass and took another sip, savoring the smoky bite and frowning at the hollow feeling in his belly. He needed to eat, but right now the last thing he felt like was food.

  He had to move, and move fast.

  He picked his cell phone up off the coffee table and punched out a number. When he got an answering service, he terminated the call without leaving a message. One of the things he was careful never to do was to leave a tape recording of his voice, anywhere. He also never used his home phone for any ''business'' calls; preferring to use a cell phone that could be discarded in an instant.

  His jaw tightened as he strode into his study and sat down at his computer terminal. It was Saturday— Reed should be at home. He typed out a short e-mail and pressed the send button. When the message had gone, he picked up the cell phone and tried the number again.

  Richard dropped his briefcase on the floor in his office, set his container of Chinese take-aways on his desk, and sat down at his keyboard, almost forgetting the food as he touched the mouse to refresh his screen, then slipped the disk he'd brought with him in the zip drive.

  He'd set up a program that searched service providers. The program, nicknamed Ferret, acted like a virus, but it was very subtle, and so far had eluded virus scans. Ferret reacted to specific words and word groupings. When it registered a hit, it e-mailed the post to a temporary address Richard had set up in an empty office in Newmarket. It was highly illegal, but very effective. The program was also ultra-high risk; the applications strictly for clandestine operations. If he could sell the technology to the CIA or the FBI, he'd be a wealthy man.

  If his bug was found and traced, he would be in trouble, big trouble, although he'd done everything he could think of to protect his rear. He'd rented the office under an assumed name and paid cash. The e-mail address was a free one, again purchased under an assumed name.

  Committing computer crime, he'd found, had been ridiculously easy, but if he didn't hit anything interesting in the next twenty-four hours, he would terminate the program.

  Richard pulled the zip file directory up onto the screen and accessed the contents. He set the screen on a steady roll, flipped the lids on his take-aways and sat back—chewing on egg fried rice and cashew chicken as he skim-read the messages.

  Despite the risk in violating a supposedly secure mail system, and his anger at whoever was jerking Laine's chain, for the first time in years he was having fun.

  He'd worked in the family business since he'd left university following in his dad's overlarge footsteps, and he was comfortable there, but computers had always been his passion.

  He read a section of an e-mail that was definitely X-rated and grinned and shook his head. Knowing what he did, he would never risk broadcasting his love life over the Internet.

  A familiar word grouping caught his eye. He dropped his fork, spilling rice onto the keyboard, and scrolled back until he found the e-mail.

  He uttered a short sharp oath.

  The address wasn't the same, but the content almost mimicked the message they'd found two days ago. Whoever had sent it had changed their address, but the message had appeared anyway because the wording was basically the same—the only difference was in the date and time.

  Richard dumped the take-aways down on the desk and picked up the phone.

  West sat back in his chair, keeping his gaze on his computer screen as he picked up the phone.

  "Our man's online again," Richard said tersely. "He's changed his tag, but elements of the message duplicate."

  Tension coiled in West's gut. This was a break none of them had expected. The odds that their man would e-mail again, using any of the same elements, had always been a long shot, that they could locate the message had bordered on the impossible.

  "And, West, he uses a number. I checked to make sure, and the numbers are the last four digits of the receipt used on the original purchase of the jade. I think he's still got the jade and he's setting up a buyer. If everything runs to schedule, we've got an hour and a half."

  West swore softly. "I'll give Cornell a ring."

  "I'm coming over," Richard announced. "Whatever you do, wait for me."

  The phone clicked in West's ear. His mouth curved ruefully as he stabbed in Cornell's cell phone number and waited for him to pick up. Against all the odds, he was beginning to like his brother-in-law.

  Cornell's answering service came on line, which meant Cornell must be on duty and busy. If he was at home, he would have picked up. West left his name and number, then tried Farrell's number. When Farrell's answering service kicked in, he left the same brief message.

  A quick call to Auckland Central netted zilch. The duty officer at Central sounded harassed. It was Saturday night, and the place was crazy with nightclub brawls, domestics and kids racing their cars on city streets. There was a shooting in West Auckland, an Armed Offenders Squad callout in Remuera, and to top it off, someone had climbed the Auckland Harbour bridge and was letting off fireworks up there. If Cornell made it back into the station at all, he would be surprised. Farrell and a number of other officers were locked into the AOS operation. How long that would take was anybody's guess, but even if it was all over in minutes, they would still be delayed at least an hour by the AOS debrief. He would page Cornell, and try his car radio, but he couldn't promise anything. The second personnel became free they would be dispatched.

  West tried Cornell's number again. When there was still no reply, he called Carter. If the message Richard had intercepted was correct, they had an hour, max, to make the meet. If Cornell or any of his team turned up, they would step back and let the police do their work. If the police didn't show, then the hell West would let this go. They'd worked hard, and against all the odds, they'd gotten a break.

  Carter picked up almost immediately. When he heard West's voice, he grunted. "This better be good. It's the third quarter and we're losing."

  West could hear the football game playing in the background. "Sorry if I'm breaking anything up, but I need you. If it's the NLR game, I already know the score—I caught it on Sky. You can cry on my shoulder when you get here."

  Carter said a short, sharp word.

  West grinned and gave him the details of the meet. "You can take out your frustrations with some undercover work. Get Blade, if you can."

  "You've gotta be kidding. He'll probably get there before I do."

  Half an hour earlier. He examined his reflection in the mirror. Time for a change.

  He unwrapped the package he'd brought, and set the peroxide and the hair color he'd bought down on the bathroom counter and picked up his bleaching cap. Systematically, he pulled hair through the cap, then applied the peroxide. When the peroxiding was complete, he rinsed his hair, dried it, then applied the color. While he waited for the color to fix, he worked on his eyebrows and lashes. When the coloring processes were complete, he threw the empty packaging in the bin, showered, and changed into black pants and a black cotton sweater. As he toweled his hair dry he critically assessed his reflection in the slightly misted mirror, then unwrapped his final purchase, and fitted colored contacts to his eyes. He slipped the case into his pocket and blinked until the lenses were comfortable, then stared at himself.

  He walked back out into the lounge and placed the velvet-wrapped jade into a small cardboard box which was packed with foam padding, closed the lid and taped it with plain brown packaging tape. He snapped the lid of his briefcase closed, then walked through the house one last time to
check he hadn't left anything behind that he needed to take.

  He had already air-freighted most of the personal belongings he wanted to retain to an address in Antwerp, Belgium—under another false name. The rest of his belongings had been packed into plastic bags and taken to the dump. His luggage was loaded into his car, along with his travel documents—including travel insurance—all under a false name.

  When he was in Europe, he frequently used one identity in particular for periods of time—accustoming himself to the persona, so that if he ever had to be Edward Hammel, an appraiser of fine gems, he could step into the role in a heartbeat.

  Once he'd delivered the jade, and verified that payment had been made to his Swiss account, he would have no further use for his old identity.

  He would be Edward Hammel.

  Chapter 15

  Richard arrived at West's apartment with his laptop and was quickly followed by Carter and Ben. A few minutes later, Blade and Gray walked in the door.

  West wasn't surprised to see Blade; if he so much as sniffed trouble, he was there—but he lifted his brows at Gray. Gray had spent years doing undercover work for the SAS and had specialized in jungle work, but he was now a family man and spent most of his time in Sydney, managing various facets of the Lombard empire. These days, he only made fleeting visits to Auckland.

  Gray ambled over to join Richard in studying the e-mail that Richard had intercepted, their conversation low-key and relaxed. Gray and Richard were acquainted, because in the high-flying world of business in which they both moved, the social circle was relatively small.

  Blade handed West a newspaper. "Looks like your cover's blown." He tapped the caption beneath the picture. ''Says you and Tyler are the new Bonnie and Clyde of the business world. Anna's going to be ticked. That used to be us."